Missed opportunities in tackling the joint biodiversity and climate crises
Climate solutions need to be biodiversity solutions and vice versa
Hi folks,
Before I get into things, I wanted to celebrate a small milestone with you. I just ticked over a thousand subscribers to Predirections. I'm so grateful to have a thousand of you reading what I have to say. When I started this about eight months ago, I thought that'd be a very ambitious number to be at by the one-year mark. So I'm here a few months early, which is nice.
If you're new here, I hope you stick around. I write about issues at the nexus of biodiversity, climate and water. I'm deeply concerned about the state of the world, but I'm also hopeful we can turn things around. I'm here to play a small role in this. In my day job, I'm an Associate Professor in ecology at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. I’m using this newsletter to connect my lab’s and other’s research to the wider world. I'm keen for this newsletter to spread its wings. If you can help me with that, I'd be super grateful.
Cheers,
Jono
I'm going to be honest with you. I feel a little deflated.
It's hard not to feel a sense of despair about the state of the world after the events of the past few weeks.
What happened to induce these feelings of disappointment? (Let's not even mention the elephant in the room about a certain political situation.) Two major United Nations climate and biodiversity conferences: COP16 and COP29.
COP events, or Conference of the Parties events, are annual United Nations conferences that bring together world leaders, ministers, and other participants to discuss and negotiate how to address key issues. In this case, biodiversity (COP16) and climate (COP29).
I know, the names are super confusing! For some reason, they decided to use the same naming convention, but they represent entirely different things. One represents the supreme decision-making body of the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD). The CBD was signed by leaders of 150 countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and promotes sustainable development through a vision that involves ecosystems and people. The other represents the main decision-making body for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where the world takes decisions to respond to climate change, including the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
I've already expressed my disappointment over the outcomes of COP16 (biodiversity) and things were even more disappointing at COP29. I was fortunate to be able to follow some of the discussions as a virtual delegate for my university (University of Canterbury) but I can't say it was an enjoyable process.
In fact, COP29 cast a whole lot of doubt over the whole process. Many have lost trust entirely.
To be honest, it seemed doomed from the outset when the host, the President of Azerbaijan, said oil and gas are a "gift of God". And things went south from there.
As my colleague, Bronwyn Hayward put it:
"Aspirations for COP29 were low from the start. Given this meeting was held in an oil state with an estimated 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists present, much concern was focused on simply protecting previous hard won concessions."
This was dubbed the finance COP, but the end result was a lot less money committed than required for countries that are disproportionately threatened by climate change. I won’t go into detail here because there’s already a lot of solid journalism summarising the outcomes. Nevertheless:
"The task to rebuild trust, and effective multilateral climate processes is now Herculean."
— Bronwyn Hayward
Hope remains though. Another academic from our University, Rebecca Peer, who attended in person, stated:
“If I’ve learned one thing from participating in COP as an observer, it’s that we researchers have a much larger role to play in these big negotiations. Scientific guidance is critical for these negotiations, and we are well placed to give it. Despite the disappointing outcome of this COP for many, I’ve returned to Aotearoa with a renewed sense of purpose to continue researching and pushing for greater action on climate change.”
Missed opportunities: The interlinked threats of climate change and biodiversity loss
The fact that the two conferences were held so close together in time presented an opportunity to really focus in on the entangled nature of the joint climate and biodiversity crises. But once again, this was a missed opportunity.
Side note: Do stay tuned, though, for more on the Rio Trio Initiative, where the heads of the UN conventions on biodiversity, climate change and desertification (yes, there's another COP soon!) have committed to drive global collaboration between climate change, biological diversity and desertification.
In my first real newsletter back in April, I talked about the need to search for win-win biodiversity-climate solutions. I talked about how we risk pitting the two interlinked crises against each other resulting in win-lose situations for biodiversity or the climate and the overwhelming need to tackle these two issues together.
As the world warms, the key contributions that nature makes to people will be disrupted, including food supplies and drinking water — climate change exacerbates biodiversity change. Similarly, as we lose species due to other human-induced threats, ecosystems begin to unravel, altering key processes that can directly impact the climate.
Put simply, a feedback exists whereby biodiversity and ecosystems help to stabilise the climate, while biodiversity needs a stable climate to persist.
We can’t afford to continue to think of these two crises in isolation. The life supporting capacity of the planet is at risk. We've already crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries. Yet, biodiversity and climate policies (and COPs) have continued to be treated as separate issues.
As I stated:
… climate fixes like planting monocultures of fast growing trees for carbon capture can have detrimental biodiversity effects for a number of reasons, including planting in areas that were not previously forested leading to increased fire risk or loss of native species and associated ecosystem functions. But many climate mitigation tools also come with multiple co-benefits, including flood or coastal protection, improved water quality, improved pollination, and even creating jobs.
These are the tools we need to prioritise. These approaches typically come under the umbrella of Nature-based Solutions. For instance:
Restoration of functioning ecosystems on land, in freshwater and in the oceans is one of the best win-win solutions because it directly meets both goals of increasing species richness and increasing carbon sequestration. Restoring diverse native ecosystems, rather than planting monocultures of non-native species like pines, also increases the resilience of such ecosystems to future climate shocks, in addition to increasing many ecosystem services such as flood protection and regulation, water quality improvements and reductions in rates of erosion. Moreover, diverse native ecosystems tend to be better in the long-run at sequestering carbon.
Bioenergy crops as a particular point of concern
One area of particular concern that was raised by Nathalie Seddon and Audrey Wagner is the increasing use of bioenergy crops. Yet, the biodiversity conference overlooked this critical issue.
Bioenergy involves growing crops for biomass that is then burned for energy or to be processed for use as biofuels. This is a key example of something that may appear good to some by replacing fossil fuels, but in reality they're more or less a lose-lose for both biodiversity and the climate. From a biodiversity perspective, they involve planting massive monocultures over huge swaths of land, which is never a good thing. Such monocultures, as I've previously alluded to, are fragile systems when it comes to climate change, and they tend to deplete soil of key nutrients, not to mention increasing fire risk in many places.
Summary
I know I've said I'd try to provide hope with this newsletter, as opposed to peddling scaremongering. But, to be honest, I'm frustrated by the lack of progress in recent times. So this one is a little more 'ranty' than normal.
Biodiversity loss and climate change are two of the most pressing (some might say existential) issues of our time. Biodiversity provides us with countless ecosystem goods and services, like clean water for drinking, food, pollination, medicine, and so on. But we’re losing species at a rate hundreds to thousands of times above background rates. And the climate, well, it’s getting pretty hard to ignore.
It's time we began to really recognise that these issues must be considered jointly rather than silo the development of policies that will lead to perverse outcomes for both. Climate solutions must simultaneously protect ecosystems, not destroy them.
I'll leave you with one final quote with a little bit of hope from my original post:
"... taking action to slow climate change is part of the solution the global biodiversity crisis and, equally, preserving and restoring nature is part of the solution to the climate crisis. Without a holistic approach we may fail to solve either issue. But it turns out win-win strategies are possible."
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Related reading:
Win-win scenarios are nice, but we can't only implement those if we want to avoid 2°C+ scenarios. We definitely should avoid lose-lose scenarios though, and monocropping of 'bioenergy' plants may be one of those. We need to always consider the amount of carbon avoided or removed (i.e., scalability), and I feel that many of the potential win-win solutions don't fare well in that regard.
Significant accomplishments are gained when leaders from 150 nations meet at Biodiversity COP16 and leaders of nearly 200 meet at Climate COP29 and, after two weeks of negotiations, reach a unanimous consensus to shoulder responsibilities and take productive steps. Much needs to be done, but please don't downplay the conferences as "missed opportunities." Thank you for reporting on such complex issues. We have a lot of work to do to get our governments in order.